Tasker – Your first profile

Tasker – How does it work?

Tasker runs quietly in the background, monitoring all activities performed on your mobile device. User created profiles contain conditions that tasker responds to. Each time a condition becomes true, tasker performs set of actions. This simple principle allows you to create elaborate profiles or even network of profiles working together. Although starting with tasker isn’t easy, within few sessions you will feel comfortable creating simple profiles.

Your first profile

Before we dive into the details about usage of the application alone, let’s create an example profile that will help us to illustrate how it all works. Please follow the video instructions. Below you have all the main stages listed and explained.

Profiles

This profile is a simple auto-rotation controller. Whenever Youtube or MX Player is opened, we will allow auto-rotation on our device, otherwise, the phone will be locked in the portrait mode.

In the profile tab please add new profile – select application context. This will be our state condition. Whenever selected applications are open – condition will be true. Select Youtube and another app from your list. Tasker will start monitoring these.

Now go back and pop up for a new Task should be visible.

Small bug in the Tasker may prevent you from seeing your input in Task name field, name it regardless and hit Enter to create the task. I called mine Rotation+. This task will contain a list of actions we want to perform when our selected applications are open.

Tasks

Firstly, we want to control the rotation of our display. You may be prompted to grant tasker with extra privileges, based on your android version. If so – please do so.

In Action category please go to Display or start typing in a Filter below: Display AutoRotate.

This will take you to the toggle responsible for that action. Set it to ON.

Next step will be to add another action, this time go to Variables and use Variable set action.

Variable name will be %Rotation

And we are going to set it to ON.

To test the Task now – hit the play button. Your phone should apply autorotation to your display and variable %Rotation will be created and set to ON.

Scenes

Go to the Scenes tab, as we are going to create simple dialog letting us know that changes to our settings have been made.
Create a new scene.

In the scene properties, you can also change the background colour. Once this is done, grabbing an edge of the background you can resize it. Make it smaller.

You will notice the Zoom icon in the corner, press it to enter into an edit mode. You will be able to add your scene elements there. Look at + and you will see a list of available elements to be added. Select the text element.

We will create a short message that will tell us an orientation of our phone.

Use the text field to enter your notification, then input your variable %Rotation+ either by typing its name with % symbol, or pressing the icon in the corner. The value of our rotation variable will be displayed instead, when the scene is displayed.

Exit that screen and tap and hold element to resize it. Align it to your preferences and you are ready to exit that scene.

Go to the task again – we will add actions responsible for displaying the scene on your phone.

As we want the scene to be visible for short time we will apply a Wait task between Show Scene and Destroy Scene action. Go to Action – Task and select Wait. Set your timer to 1 sec. Then add the previously mentioned Destroy Scene action from the scene menu.

Let’s test it.

Your task will stop and display an error. Tasker saves data on exit, and since we have created the scene we have not exited the application, and we are unable to reference it properly in our profile. Exit task, then exit the Tasker out, and reopen it again. Now all should work as intended.

Congratulations! You have a working profile.

I’m aware that this may not be a spectacular example, and you can’t wait to create something more suited to your needs, but this will serve us as an example.

Last thing before you go further. Go to Tasker preferences and in UI settings – disable the beginner’s mode. Since I will be telling you more about tasker, it is a good idea that you would see all options available in the tasker itself.

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About the Author

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